The objective of the EODC Business Model Validation for Exploitation Platforms – Task 1 is the investigation of operational sustainability and scalability for EPs with a special focus on the already developed TEPs.

Within the tasks the platform scalability from a local-, regional-, national, continental- and global-scale environment with a few local actors up to an EP with a global coverage and user community will be considered. Furthermore, the requirements of different user groups / actors will be assessed. For that aim, next to scientific users, commercial companies (from small start-ups, SMEs to large companies) will be reflected.

For the study several platform services will be analysed in detail with real-world examples and cost- and business models with the different future likely exploitation scenarios for the different user groups / actors and different platform scalability will be investigated, alongside an overall general analysis of the platforms. A schema will be designed to ensure that the same broad suite of parameters will be captured in the analysis of each platform to enable as comprehensive comparison as possible to be undertaken considering the study timeframe and funding. The analysis will be applied to the existing EODC business model and furthermore, the EODC cost and business model will be refined. Finally, this leads to a commercial EODC offer for hosting EP functionality and services (again for different scales and user groups).